The Societe Francaise de Production (SFP), France's biggest production company, used its newly acquired NTT Electronics HD MPEG-2 encoder and decoder for its HD broadcasts of the French Open tennis tournament from the center court of Roland Garros stadium.

The encoder was carried along with wireless HD cameras covering center court action, while the decoder was deployed in an OB van on the stadium premises. SFP, which began HD broadcasting during the 2006 fiscal year, chose the encoder and decoder because of their high quality, light weight and ease of operation.

According to SFP development director Rudy Dendleux, the production company was attracted to the lip sync feature of the encoder/decoder because it made configuring and operating the HD system with correctly synchronized images and sound easy.